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Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

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Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#121

Post by nick__m »

bhaney wrote: post #24
bnralt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The safety concerns sound circular in an almost Kafkaesque manner. From what I can tell, a strain of the bacteria was found in the wild that created less acid and seemed to lead to less carries. So people thought it needed to be safer, so they instead created a genetically modified version of the bacteria. But now it couldn’t even be tested in the wild because the “safer” version had so many unknowns that even lettin…

> From what I can tell, a strain of the bacteria was found in the wild that created less acid and seemed to lead to less carries I think you're confused about which changes to the bacteria were natural and which were engineered. A strain in the wild was discovered that produced a weak antibiotic that it had also developed a resistance to, but it still had the original metabolic pathway that produced lactic acid. Rese…

If that strain produces ethanol and can colonize the guts, then it has the potential to cause the auto-brewery syndrome. That a good reason to be careful!

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#122

Post by smaudet »

psychlops wrote: post #116
amarant wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is a trend in online writing lately, and it's leading me to more and more withdraw from online discourse. Whenever someone introduces something that greatly helps with something, there are a bunch of people who start pointing out that, while the new solution is waay better than anything before it, it's not 100% perfect, and therefore "it's benefits are exaggerated" or similar. If the new thing is in…

Perfect is the enemy of the good.

I think the bigger issue is not whether it has some efficacy, even if limited (which could be interpreted as a good thing), it's the potential for the bacterium to create a mono-culture, which would be objectively bad (remember, diversity is critical in populations, and for our oral health perhaps even necessary).

So not so much perfect being the enemy of the good, fluoride isn't perfect either, but it is good. This is potentially extremely harmful, and possibly even a source of something like a new AIDS pandemic...

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#123

Post by lannisterstark »

smaudet wrote: post #122
psychlops wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect is the enemy of the good.

I think the bigger issue is not whether it has some efficacy, even if limited (which could be interpreted as a good thing), it's the potential for the bacterium to create a mono-culture, which would be objectively bad (remember, diversity is critical in populations, and for our oral health perhaps even necessary). So not so much perfect being the enemy of the good, fluoride isn't perfect either, but it is good. This…

I'm sorry but the last claim seems extremely exaggerated.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#124

Post by vigneshwaraya »

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #56
hackernewds wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thousands of years of test of time stood with ayurveda. also validated with citations as experiments catch up https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5654187/

>The process of oil swishing is believed to cure or control 30 different types of systemic diseases including headaches, migraine, and chronic diseases such as asthma and diabetes mellitus. Oh come on.

[dead]

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#125

Post by [deleted] »

teslabox wrote: post #105
Loughla wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any science available about that, that isn't from the company selling it?

My HN comment, linked to as [0], was on a submission about the history of NovaMin - iirc it was originally used for soldiers in Vietnam, then came to be used for repair of teeth. You can do your own experiment: $10 for a tube, plus $6 shipping. If you have sensitive teeth it’s worth a trial.

[deleted]

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#126

Post by cubefox »

amarant wrote: post #110
cubefox wrote: post #60

> We are thus left with a product, Lumina, that cannot guarantee the prevention of future caries "Guarantees" are not strictly needed. What matters most is whether there is a substantial reduction of future caries, not whether it makes you totally immune to it. Say, if Lumina/BCS3-L1 "only" reduces cavities by 50%, it is already half as good (arguably) as a drug which prevented 100%. This would already be large progr…

I feel like this is a trend in online writing lately, and it's leading me to more and more withdraw from online discourse. Whenever someone introduces something that greatly helps with something, there are a bunch of people who start pointing out that, while the new solution is waay better than anything before it, it's not 100% perfect, and therefore "it's benefits are exaggerated" or similar. If the new thing is in…

A similar thing happened when the media learned about Ozempic (semaglutide) a while ago. Multiple progressive outlets, especially the Guardian, published articles stating the drug was overhyped, playing down its value, citing overweight women from "fat studies" academia (basically activists against the stigma of being overweight saying that being overweight itself is not the problem), emphasizing all its downsides etc. Of course they couldn't stop the hype, because the drug actually works.

Yet another example: In early 2020, for a few weeks many news sites claimed that face masks don't help against coronavirus transmission because there was "no evidence" that they did. Of course this wasn't true (the evidence was just limited, and the protection wasn't optimal), and they changed their tone quickly once multiple non-Asian countries started to introduce mask mandates for visiting public places.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#127

Post by fnordpiglet »

gwern wrote: post #114

OP reads like a lazy ripoff of earlier debates around Lumina, principally https://trevorklee.substack.com/p/please-dont-take-luminas-a... , which I don't see acknowledged or linked at all.

To be fair I be fair I’ve seen many articles and source materials on the debate and most of it is based on an understanding of the current state of the science, which is available from primary sources and not just random substacks and blogs. I would feel totally comfortable writing one of these articles on Lumina myself without citing anything but primary research, which this article does do, and not citing anyone of the secondary sources of opinion I might have read along the way.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#128

Post by cosmojg »

dsego wrote: post #94
jtc331 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife seems to be basically immune to cavities; I get them easily. I brush very carefully; she brushes only quickly. Our diets are the same — if anything she probably gets more sugar. We have the same water source. Etc. Clearly there’s a lot more to this than what you’re claiming. Unless you’d propose that all of my current problems are due to conditions while I was child or similar.

I'm the same, I brush and floss regularly, occasionally use chx mouthwash, dental disclosing tables and oral probiotics. She forgets to brush sometimes, eats more sweet. She had only one or two cavities in twenty years we've known each other. I've had two root canals and have fillings regularly. Truth be told, she doesn't drink coffee at all, I drink several cups a day. She also doesn't drink much alcohol, I have one…

How many different dentists have you been to in the past twenty years? Does she see the same dentist as you now?

I once had a dentist who claimed I had a cavity every visit. I saw him once a year, and he did little more than look at my teeth. I've since switched dentists three times as I moved around the country and my dental insurance changed, and with all three, I've gotten nothing but rave reviews about the state of my teeth. I see my latest dentist twice a year, and he does an X-ray and an intraoral scan every other visit, and on my most recent visit, he discovered that one of those alleged cavities my first dentist had filled was filled improperly and appeared to have become reinfected. Unfortunately for me, I was busy at the time and postponed treatment for too long, and now the filling has fallen out and the tooth has collapsed in on itself, requiring a root canal and a crown, which in addition to being somewhat painful, will likely set me back several thousand dollars.

If you have access to the Journal of American Medicine (JAMA), I highly recommend reading this recent review of overdiagnosis and overtreatment in dentistry[1]. If you don't have access to JAMA, you can find pertinent excerpts in this Reddit post[2], along with some interesting backlash from some thoroughly offended dentists (all of it without any real supporting evidence, of course, though some of the points brought up are worth considering).

[1] https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2024.0222

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/Dentistry/comments/1cql9a8/interest...

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#129

Post by davoneus »

Loughla wrote: post #78
teslabox wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned about Novamin a few years ago [0], and ordered BioMin Restore [1] to give it a try. I'm now a devoted customer. There are other Novamin/hydroxyapatite toothpastes, but I only have experience with this one brand. I think this company's latest news is the version of their toothpaste that has fluoride [2] is now FDA-approved for sensitive teeth, so they're going to be able to sell it in the United States speci…

Is there any science available about that, that isn't from the company selling it?

Nature relayed one from the British Dental Journal (2023) on the acid protection granted by BioMin F. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41415-024-7876-8)

Here's another from 2022 that compares Colgate fluoride toothpaste against BioMin F(https://shorturl.at/M4hiQ).

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#130

Post by cubefox »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #119
cubefox wrote: post #60

> We are thus left with a product, Lumina, that cannot guarantee the prevention of future caries "Guarantees" are not strictly needed. What matters most is whether there is a substantial reduction of future caries, not whether it makes you totally immune to it. Say, if Lumina/BCS3-L1 "only" reduces cavities by 50%, it is already half as good (arguably) as a drug which prevented 100%. This would already be large progr…

The article makes clear that a 50% reduction is likely massively optimistic.

You mean this quote?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41574918

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